An early high point for the year (lots of pictures)

[mlcor]

It's been a busy year, with three watches leaving the fold and two joining (the GO and the Snowflake). I had planned out the year, and only one more watch was going to join. I had originally thought I was going to pull the trigger on a Royal Oak, but as it was his grail, Geoff forbade me from doing so in another thread, therefore I decided to take a different approach. (Just kidding, Geoff, the RO is still on the possible list for 2016).

One hole in my collection is a true dress watch. I have several very nice watches that are dressy, but none that I consider a "pure" dress watch, i.e., just hours, minutes and a small seconds (yes, I know, a truly pure one wouldn't have a seconds hand, but I'm not fond of those). I do wear suits a fair amount of the time, and I can therefore justify (OK, rationalize) owning a nice dress watch. So I started searching over a year ago, looking at pretty much everything out there in the market (new, not vintage). I wanted one with class, elegance, and history. Something that was pure, but not so boring as to be uninteresting. I was willing to spend a fair amount, since this will be (most likely) my only dress watch. I started looking at the basic hand wound models of the usual suspects--Patek, Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet, JLC, Piaget, Lange, etc. The basic Patek model, although beautifully done, seemed too plain to me. Same with the Lange Saxonia, plus I wasn't a big fan of the hands. JLC's manual wind watch didn't do anything for me, plus I already own one JLC. I didn't want the 9:00 location of the small seconds on the Piaget.

In the end, I knew what I wanted, and over the past year, I've continued to stalk it, trying to justify the price in my mind. I had pretty much decided I would pull the trigger some time later this year. But then, the mischievous watch sprites struck. You know, the ones who come along with a great, limited time offer? Jomashop had the exact model I wanted on sale--31% off MSRP. The best I had seen before that was around 20% off. I agonized for several days, repeatedly going back to the website to see if it was still there. Finally, I decided I'd never see a price like that again, and pushed the button.

When I got back to the office today, there was a box.



...and inside, another box.



...and inside, in addition to a watch, a smaller travel box:



The inside has storage space for the watch and accessories, etc.:



The watch, you say? See next post...